SOTT Focus:


Stormtrooper

SOTT Focus: British Teenager, Azhar Ahmed, Arrested for Anti-War Facebook Post

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An actual (no joke!) British government 'transport for London' poster.
A British teenager has been arrested and will appear in a UK court as a result of a comment he posted on Facebook about the deaths last week of six British soldiers in Afghanistan.

On March 8th, 19 year old Azhar Ahmed posted a comment on his Facebook page about the deaths of 6 British soldiers in Afghanistan on the 6th March. On the same day as Azhar's post, a Facebook group entitled Azhar Ahmed Scumbag!!! was created (with large Union Jack flag as its logo) and, someone (perhaps the creator of the FB page) reported his comment to the police. The following day, Friday, Azhar was arrested and charged over the weekend. He was then released on bail and will appear in Dewsbury magistrates' court on March 20th. An online petition has also been created that demands that Azhar be "sent to prison for hate crimes against British soldiers".

Most disturbing here is not that there are many rabid Right Wing Authoritarian types on Facebook, but that the British police clearly took the complaint seriously and took the time and effort to investigate the matter and saw fit to send a squad car to Azhar's house to arrest him.

2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: The Kony 2012 Delusion

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The people behind this campaign are MASSIVELY misguided. Or it's a CIA-sponsored psy-ops.

Take for example the fact that one of the 12 'policy makers' (US politicians) that they are targeting to help them ensure Joseph Kony is arrested is George 'Dubya' Bush. The puppet president who presided over the murder of 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. And we're all meant to believe that people like him are going to care about the plight of Ugandan children? Kony is Bush's ideological brother for god's sake.

Other than their complete ignorance of the fact that the US political elite is populated by the world's worst war criminals, the makers of this video are also massively ignorant of the truth about WHY Uganda, and many other African nations, are subjected to the brutal excesses of war lords and have been for so many decades.

2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Putin Wins Presidential Election Despite US Govt. and Western Media Interference

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© AFP/Dmitry Astakhov"I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia," Vladimir Putin said Sunday after a landslide victory in Russia's presidential election.
Let's face it, most people don't have the time, energy or inclination to try to separate truth from lies in our world today. The ability to do so is, however, crucial for many reasons. For over ten years, we here at Sott.net have been analysing and writing on what passes for the 'news' and we've come to a conclusion that may be of help to those who can't, or won't, do their own digging for the truth.

The conclusion is that you can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, assume that the truth about any major political event can be found more or less 180 degrees from what politicians or the media (especially US and European politicians and media) claim. Try it out. To do this, you have to do it consciously. So take any current major political news item in the media and, in your mind, flip it 180 degrees. When reading the headline or summary of a news item, simply reverse the statement that it makes. I can assure you that this 180 version will be a lot closer to the truth.

Take for example Vladimir Putin's recent election victory. Check the headlines from major Western 'news' corporations and you'll see that they all smear, subtly and not so subtly, Putin's win with allegations of 'corruption'. Rupert Murdoch's Sky News went so far as to put 'scare quotes' around the words 'wins election'. Virtually all other media outlets carried the same disparaging headline in one form or another, which is not surprising since there are about 3 or 4 actual Western 'news' agencies that report on events and then simply share the information with their subsidiaries. In this case, our 180 degree approach works rather well.

Cut

SOTT Focus: Undersea Internet Cables Cut AGAIN!

A series of bizarre coincidences has left several African countries experiencing significantly reduced Internet traffic. The Register reported 28 February that an undersea cable was cut off the coast of Kenya on 25 February, severely reducing Internet traffic along the Eastern side of the African continent. The East African Marine Systems (TEAMS) cable pipes Internet and telecommunications from its landing points in Fujairah in the UAE to Mombasa, Kenya. A ship had apparently "dropped anchor in a restricted area", though no further details, in particular the ship's name, were provided. But what had apparently gone unnoticed up until this incident, at least in Western media, was the severance of three other submarine communications cables further north in the Red Sea on 17 February. The three cables in question were the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), the Europe India Gateway (EIG) and the South East Asia Middle East Western Europe-3 (SEA-ME-WE-3). EASSy issued a press release on 29 February stating that:

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© submarinecablemap.comThe East African Marine System (TEAMS) cable from UAE to Kenya. (Click on image for clearer resolution)
  • The EASSy cable was cut on 17 February 2012 at 14:27
  • The cable cut is at a depth of 165m
  • The cut section of cable is located in the Red Sea between the EASSy landing stations at Port Sudan and Djibouti
  • The vessel believed to be responsible for the cable cut has been identified.
  • The cut is believed to have been caused by the anchor of this vessel, a cargo ship, being dragged more than 150km along the sea bed

Bizarro Earth

SOTT Focus: The Cs Hit List 06: Let's Do the Planetary Twist to the Tune of the Brothers Heliopolis

OK, it's time for more weirdness. As we covered in a recent SOTT Report, accounts and recordings of strange noises heard all over the world went semi-viral on YouTube in January this year, and some are even receiving mainstream media coverage. Some YouTube pundits claim they're all faked, a couple of scientists say they're 'normal' and nothing to worry about, and many are freaking out as the phenomenon is feeding the '2012-apocalypse-oh-my-God-we're-all-gonna-die' hysteria. So what's really going on?

The hype appears to have started with these videos from Kiev, Ukraine, posted on 3 August and 11 August 2011, respectively. (Although, as we'll see later, these were not the first accounts.)



(See here for a translation of the uploader's account of the sounds and analysis and here for a summary of the associated thread, with additional analyses and accounts.)

Dozens of videos have been uploaded since then, some obviously faked, others perhaps not. For example, at least 28 videos posted in the months since Kiev obviously use the sound from the original video played over random video footage, sometimes with staged 'Oh-my-God-what-is-that?' dialogue. And, no, as far as I can tell, none of them use samples from the films Red State or War of the Worlds, as some have claimed. The similarity is striking (trumpet-like blasts, metallic rumbles and such), but truth has been known to resemble fiction. And it wouldn't be the first time that similar strange noises have been heard, both in recent times and the murky depths of history recorded in myth and legend.

2 + 2 = 4

SOTT Focus: Big Agri-Business, Big Pharma, Arms Trafficking, Suicide Cults and MIVILUDES - The Truth Behind France's Cult-Hunting Policies Exposed

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Caveat lector: Nothing in the following investigative report should be construed as evidence that Sott.net condones the manipulative activities of organisations like Scientology or any other organisation that preys upon human frailty. Not only do we accept the need to protect the vulnerable in society from such 'New Age' con-artists, over the past 10 years we have repeatedly sought to expose such predators. It is the very New Age con artists that we exposed who then began to smear us with the "cult" label. The problem however, is that state-funded bodies that have been created supposedly to protect citizens from 'mental manipulation' have their own agenda that is, in the long run, just as pernicious as the spiritual snake oil-peddling groups they claim to stand against. This is revealed in the fact that MIVILUDES has only undertaken a token attack on Scientology; they were never raided nor interrogated (as many harmless groups have been), and at the end of a long, well-publicized legal action, were fined only 600,000 euros, a veritable slap on the wrist for such a wealthy organization. Meanwhile, France's president, Sarkozy, cosied up to Scientology's representative, Tom Cruise on several occasions. In short, MIVILUDES' actions against Scientology are merely for show.

Since the 1970s, successive French governments have used, abused and exaggerated the danger posed by New Age groups to enforce an oppressive conformity of belief in the state itself on the French people. This simply supplants one destructive and manipulative cult ideology for another. As the preeminent anti-cult organisation in France, MIVILUDES, has stated: "State repression must take place when a certain number of elements are gathered [...] when one or several people start getting fond of ideas not commonly shared and agreed upon by society." That is to say, when ordinary people start to get fond of ideas that could, in a general way, threaten the control of the psychopaths in power over the masses of normal human beings.

The troubling state of affairs that we outline in the following paragraphs does not, however, concern only the French people. It is global in scope and has its roots in the 1960s and '70s and the efforts by Western 'intelligence agencies' and elements within Western governments to co-opt and discredit what was known as the 'Human Potential Movement' and the subsequent 'New Age' movement and enforce a conformity of thought and belief on hundreds of millions of people.

Initially the strategy involved the infiltration and co-opting of any group that was beginning to see (and speak about) the problems with big governments and big corporations dominating (and destroying) the world. It was, and is, about control of the population - mind, body and soul - of any given country. But the agenda was not limited to mere infiltration of such groups. After all, it would take a lot of effort and manpower to continually keep tabs on each new group and try to subvert them. What was needed was the ability to automatically demonise any group that 'deviated' from social norms or proposed ideas that were at odds with the agenda of big government and big corporations. Within the process of subverting such groups, the logical answer was found.

Once a group had been infiltrated (or created from scratch by an intelligence agency), they could, quite easily, be made to appear quite insane. Groups that have lost touch with reality ultimately resort to extreme measures, like suicide, or so the logic goes. What better way to demonise the very idea of 'alternative lifestyles' than to create some high-profile cases where such groups commit 'collective suicide'?

But people involved in such subterfuge are always on the lookout for an opportunity to maximise their gains with the least effort. Groups that have been targeted for transformation into a 'cult' are ultimately expendable, and expendable assets of intelligence agencies are traditionally used as cover for highly illegal activities on the part of government and corporate leaders.

If certain influential and well-connected individuals want to engage in illegal money-making activities, they organise themselves in secret and attempt to ensure a significant level of deniability. If they want to engage in some HIGHLY illegal activity (like weapons sales prohibited under international law, money laundering, overthrowing governments, phony terrorist attacks, pedophilia rings, etc.) they organise themselves under the cover of an organisation that can, if necessary, be denounced as a 'suicide cult'. After all, 'suicide cult' members tell no tales and few questions are asked about their motives because, clearly, they were just insane.

In addition, such 'cult suicides' very effectively establish the 'reality' of dangerous cults in the public mind and that 'reality' can then be used to defame, threaten and, if possible, destroy any group that threatens the status quo of psychopaths in power and the general population as their slaves.

The 'Jonestown' cult and 'collective suicide' (which was clearly a CIA operation) is an example of this very strategy, but there have been many other such operations, which together have produced the 'cult' meme in modern society. But it has been in France, where adherence to, and admiration for, 'normal' French cultural values is seen as the quintessence of sanity, that the 'cult' meme has been used to such great effect in the modern world.


Crusader

SOTT Focus: Human Rights Violations in France

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Since the 1990s, there have been several legal entities created in France that are supported by the government whose sole purpose is to mandate what people can think and believe. These organizations have the capability (expressly designed into them) of bypassing and/or superseding any rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. These French organizations, for instance MIVILUDES, are essentially full-spectrum Fascism created and run by psychopaths and their Authoritarian Followers. Anybody who is discovered to have the slightest tendency to adopt alternative views is seemingly a danger because they are undoubtedly going to turn into an "apocalyptic cult" at any moment! The examples of the mass suicides of the People's Temple, the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate are trotted out at the beginning of the 2010 MIVILUDES report, thereby making the label "cult" as scary as "Muslim Terrorist". (Never mind that those events were CIA PsyOps designed as a sort of '9-11' against non-mainstream thinking, the way 9-11 was designed to initiate the War on Terror.)

Particularly targeted by these organizations are any and all individuals or groups which advocate practices such as alternative medicine (including nutritional approaches to getting and staying healthy), non-mainstream cancer therapies, yoga, meditation and other stress-relieving techniques, especially if such discussions include scientific support. Additionally targeted are any individuals who discuss 'conspiracy theories' (especially about 9-11, but also including economic collapse and NWO topics), UFOs/aliens, psychology other than Freudianism (especially if such discussions include cutting edge scientific support; Jungian psychology is especially targeted), Earth Changes and cometary bombardments (especially if it includes scientific support), increasing earthquake and volcanic activity (especially if it includes scientific support) and more. All of these activities, or even thoughts about these activities, will get you labeled as a cult or a follower of a cult and subject to some pretty frightening procedures designed to "help" you reorganize your thinking more in line with what is accepted by the mainstream authorities such as the American Medical Association (AMA), Big Pharma, Big-Agri, NASA and certainly the CIA. Anything that is not handed down from those authorities is labeled "pseudo-science", no matter how credible the scientist or how accurate the research. In short, it is as much a war against real science - as opposed to the corrupt science that has dominated the world for the past 100 years and is used to support wars more than anything else - as it is against religious beliefs. Moreover, if you are researching religions (Bible scholars beware!), mysticism, ancient wisdom and alternative history, you are also a cult. And if you have no apparent cultic beliefs, it's just a ruse; you are just trying to appear like a researcher to lure people in, waiting to turn into an apocalyptic cult at any moment. The whole approach is reminiscent of the Bush gang's claims about WMDs vis-a-vis Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and I think you all realize what that kind of rhetoric led to.

The 2010 MIVILUDES report tells us:
The fact of offering people the possibility to search for mysticism, wisdom and a forgotten ideal world, all the while assuring them of happiness, can be an extremely efficient bait.

There exists as well the risk that current social topics may be used (such as ecological aspirations) in order to play on people's anguish and anxiety such as: frustration concerning the meaning of life, solitude, the pervasive anonymity and isolation, the lack of interpersonal communication and social acceptance, the need for the religious and the sacred in one's life, refusal of a crushing social way of life.

By feeding into this environment of social anxiety via the use of references to pseudo-scientific elements, even those which have not been verified, in reality these beliefs are a tool that promotes collective fear, with the purpose of exerting more power over people and, in extreme cases, this can possibly lead to a vital risk [risk of mass suicide!] for the members of the group, or to questioning mainstream society through more or less violent actions.
I think that the perceptive reader can see what this organization is set up for and what it is they are really afraid of: they are afraid of people waking up and recognizing that the lunatics have taken over the asylum! It is clear to any normal person with empathy that the authors of this report are inquisitors set up to defend the status quo of the rule of a pathological elite who are not fit to rule as evidenced by their psychopathic behavior and intolerance towards anything truly human and who are able (and have been able) to get away with the most outrageous human rights violations in modern day France.

Did you know that alternative medicine and homeopathy are labeled as cults in France? People have gone to jail and have had their children taken away from them for giving alternative treatments to their children even when they were told in advance by their doctors that the child's case was terminal and they would die even with the mainstream treatments (chemotherapy and radiation?!). The parents were destroyed for seeking something, anything, that might save the life of their child or, at least, not subject them to the horrors of modern cancer treatments. (See Maître Jean-Marc Florand, avocat de monsieur et madame de M, in French.)

The fact is that it is the psychopaths who rise to the top who have no stress. Normal people who feel empathy and who have a conscience are the ones who are being crushed in this pathological society. To whom do French people turn to in order to get help for their sufferings and wounds? As it happens, the psychological sciences in France are as backward as almost everything else; they still consider Freud to be the only psychological authority! How Dark Ages is that? Most psychology in the rest of the modern world is NOT Freudian and more and more psychologists are coming to the realization - as Jung did - that Freud was a psychopath himself. Which means that psychological help in France can only add to people's suffering.

Wall Street

SOTT Focus: The Lorax and What Matters

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© Ferd4Where are we headed?
I was thinking about the state of the world yesterday, having gotten off the phone with my sister. She was once again reminding me that even though she and her husband both work, they barely make it most months and things just keep getting worse. She said that they feel they have no connection to anything, since fewer things just make common sense - that she has no control - that no matter how hard they work, for so many years, the rules keep shifting and the liars keep making more money while normal people drown a little more every day. She's right. The rules have changed and they changed while no one was watching. In fact, I'd say they changed because no one was watching.

Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: How is the World Going to End in 2012?

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I read in the news this morning that some video game developers started a $400,000 pledge drive to fund their new video game. In just 24 hours, they had collected more than they needed: They got 1.4 MILLION!

For a video game. To pay them just to hang out and write code. Truth isn't wanted anymore: only fun fiction that keeps people from having to deal with the real world.

So, let me end your suspense: The answer to the question in the title is "yes". The world is ending in 2012. That is, the final implementation of the fascist, totalitarian New World Order will be accomplished this year and you will be in that "New World" that the global elite have designed for you, and planned to implement for a very long time now. Oh, indeed, similar New World Order's have been staged in the past on smaller scales, but this time it's global because they are all in on it together! Former New World Order's didn't really fail, even if they ostensibly fell; they just passed the torch around for millennia, spreading the disease, growing the sickness in society, until finally, now, with global communication and incredible weapons of destruction in their hands, they are ready to finalize the Faustian bargain that you, the people, signed with your blood.

That's what 2012 is all about. It's not about some grand and glorious transformation or ascension to another existence! It's not about being 'raptured' to heaven at the right hand of Jesus because you helped to 'initiate the Eschaton'! It's not about 'Starseeds' being taken aboard spacecraft and getting airlifted to some other planet of the '5th dimension'. Pure and simple, prophecy is coming true, just not the way you all thought. It is the end of your world as human beings, your reduction to pure slave-hood, your children turned over to be sex toys or cannon fodder for psychopaths, and there's nothing you can do about it now.

Health

SOTT Focus: The Obesity Epidemic, Courtesy of the Agricultural Industry

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The size 12 hour-glass figure, an endangered body shape.
If you love old movies, you've noticed that women back in the old days tended to have beautiful hour glass body shapes, a la Marilyn Monroe. Nowadays, such figures have become a rarity because women have become "boxy" in shape. Research suggests there are now five times as many "rectangular-shaped" women than those with the classic Marilyn Monroe hourglass shape. Almost one in two British women fall into the rectangle category, a boy-ish body shape where there is little difference between the bust, waist and hip measurements.

According to the CDC, about one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 - 19 years are obese. In 2010, no state had less than 20% obesity prevalence. Another statistic tells us that over two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.

Two thirds! In the country where the USDA food pyramid and low fat eating has guided food choices for at least two generations!

Worldwide, with the spread of Western lifestyle (including diet), obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight and nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010.

According to MyPyramid.gov, you should be consuming at least 3 oz. of whole grain cereals, breads, crackers, rice, cereal or pasta; ideally 6 oz. A lot of people consuming exactly the recommended amounts see no weight loss at all and might actually see their weight go up.
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Click on this abomination in order to enlarge it.
Could there be a relationship between this dietary advice and the obesity epidemic? Could it be that the root of the obesity problem is due to our health advisers who believe that animal fat causes heart disease and high cholesterol, and that carbohydrates in grains and vegetables are The Healthy Solution? Based on this, it follows that a diet restricted in carbohydrates and rich in fat is going to be discouraged by them. We are supposed to be consuming at least 45% of our calories as carbohydrates where most of it should come from vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. This diet philosophy is dominant in our world today despite the facts cited above, despite the fact that the obesity epidemic has come upon us in lock-step with this dietary philosophy.